Document title

The shifting geography of corporate headquarters in Australia : a longitudinal analysis

Authors(s) and Affiliation(s)

TONTS M. (1)
;
TAYLOR M. (2)
;
(1) School of Earth and Environment, the University of Western Australia, Crawley, AUSTRALIE(2) School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, ROYAUME-UNI

Abstract

This paper discusses the changing spatial concentration of the headquarters of large companies in Australia between 1953 and 2009. The first part involves a consideration of how shareholders’ funds and company profits are concentrated within the Top 100 firms. The second part considers the changing spatial distribution of headquarters within the urban system, focusing not only on Australia’s largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, but also on the country’s ‘second-tier cities’. It demonstrates that rather than radical restructuring and upheaval in the geography of Australia's corporate headquarters, the process over the past sixty years or so has been one of gradual and relatively ordered change